Spending Time on Side Hustles

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Lately I have been feeling super overwhelmed. I feel like I have no time for anything, and I haven’t been very efficient with my time.

I work over 45 hours per week at my day job, and spend 10 hours per week getting ready and commuting for that job. I also probably spend around 40 hours per week doing my side hustles as well. So that’s around 100 hours per week dedicated to working.

I multi-task when I do anything, which of course makes everything take just a little bit longer since I have to constantly switch my focus. And that of course means a lot of time wasted.

One thing that everyone is constantly asking me, is how I have time to do everything that I do. It’s really not that, that bad. This is especially so since we don’t have kids. If we had children, I’m pretty sure all of this would be impossible! I’m not sure how some bloggers do it!

Determining on how much time I spend on side hustles is hard to quantify.

For example, I love to read blogs and articles, and don’t know if I should be counting that as “working.” Most of you know that I am all over the place and read all different types of blogs. I don’t consider reading a blog post “working” because I genuinely like to do this and like to know what’s going on in everyone’s lives.

Keep in mind that I have a full-time job completely unrelated to blogging (analyst in the financial services industry), so my side hustles revolve around that currently.  I usually spend each Saturday and Sunday working on my blog as well. I definitely spend at least 40 hours a week on my side hustles.

Cutting back in certain areas

I’ve cut back in certain areas because I’ve been feeling too overwhelmed due to lack of time. I don’t do much staff writing anymore. I noticed that writing on my own blog was suffering because I didn’t have enough blog ideas and was using all of my awesome ideas for my staff writing jobs.

I will most likely increase this again once I make the full-time self-employment switch, but for right now, my time is very limited.

How much time I spend on my blog posts

I spend a decent amount of time on my blog posts. I will write it and then go back to it days later to add more, so that’s also hard to quantify.  Usually for my whale posts (which have been every single post that I’ve written lately), these take hours and hours. High quality posts are important!

I know a lot of bloggers says that shorter posts of around 500 words are better, but once I start talking about something, I tend to talk about EVERYTHING. I should probably work on finding a way to split up my posts, but for right now I am happy with the length of my posts.

Here is my normal weekday schedule:

  • 6:15 am – Wake up and get ready for work. Yes I can get ready super quickly. This is years of practice of being able to apply makeup within minutes!  🙂
  • 6:45 am – Check emails, moderate comments on my blog, read blogs (I love reading blog posts!)
  • 7:45 am – Leave for work
  • During my lunch break – Check and reply to emails, blog work, side hustles
  • 6:00 pm – I come home from work and work on my side hustles more. Sometimes I barely work on them, but sometimes I work on them a ton. 

How much time do you spend on your side hustles?

 

Should you get rid of all debt for financial independence?

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Should you get rid of all debt for financial independence?

Is this what you want in financial independence?

Financial independence has definitely been on my mind a lot lately. I even started a blog (this one) dedicated to it! Financial independence doesn’t have the same definition to everyone.

Some consider it similar to early retirement, and you are not working. Some are on the opposite end and think it means that you can choose when and where you work and be more focused on enjoying life. One thing that may be different for some is financial independence when it comes to debt.

Debt doesn’t always mean the same thing for everyone. Some categorize debt as good or bad and place a lot of value on interest rates. Some think that all debt is bad and must be paid off. So does a person eliminate all debt before they declare that they are financially independent?

Are you considered financially independent if you are taking advantage of low-interest rates and would rather invest your money?

For me, I would prefer to have all debt gone. I know that many say you should keep low-interest rate loans since you can earn higher than that in the market.

However, I would rather have complete financial independence and have no debt, especially not a mortgage. I would want my monthly expenses to be as low as possible, but still enjoy life. That means no mortgage and no car payments or anything else large.

Positives of eliminating debt

  1. Lower monthly expenses. Your housing expense most likely won’t be completely eliminated since you will most likely have to pay property taxes still, but you will still be cutting your expenses by a lot.
  2. More room in your yearly budget to do what you want.  With debt, you might want to have more of a stable job, which might not equal financial independence for you any longer.
  3. Knowing that you paid it all with your current earnings can reduce the pressure to earn more to pay back debt. Also, you can get discounts when you pay in full. For example, according to cheapautoinsurance.net, you can avoid paying additional credit charges and save around five to 10 percent on your auto insurance when you pay in full.

Positives of keeping debt

  1. Might be able to earn more in the market and “make money” off your debt.
  2. Less net worth tied up in your home. If you truly needed to dip into your investments, then cash from housing may not be easily accessible.

Are you working on eliminating all debt?

 

Sources of Passive Income

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bbb low-cost housing, tegnestuen vandkunstenThe other day, I discussed passive income and what it is. Today’s post will be all about different sources of passive income.

I would love for you all to comment below and tell me what you do for passive income, or what you would like to do. I’m sure everyone is interested, and I definitely am!

Rental Income

Many people get into the rental market as a form of passive income. Depending on how you want to define passive income, rental income may or may not be included as a passive choice. However, for the sake of this post, we will say that rental income is passive.

Right now, we rent a room to my sister. It is definitely a form of passive income for us, as she has not been a bother at all. The money she pays us ($325 per month) has been easy so far.

We are still unsure if we will rent out our current home or sell it when we buy our next house. We are kind of leaning towards selling it. Someone brought up a good point in my post on MSOC in that if we were looking to buy a rental home, we probably wouldn’t buy this one since we could probably make more money from a renting out a cheaper house.

Royalties

If you’ve invented or created something in the past, you might be able to collect royalties from it. Maybe you invented something that everyone has to use, and you then collect royalties from it. Also, maybe you created an awesome song or took great pictures, and others wants to use them also.

Writing

Writing a book can be time-consuming in the beginning, but once you are done, the money could be considered passive income.

You could sell your books through online stores or have others sign up to be your affiliate and they can sell your books for you. I have been thinking about writing an ebook, but right now I am just too busy!

Dividends

Making money by investing in dividend paying stocks is a source of passive income. You can generate income whenever a company pays dividends. This does not only have to be from publicly-traded stocks. You can also invest in closely-held entities which distribute cash. This might be a family company that you don’t work in, or maybe a good investment that you just happened to come across.

In the field that I work in, many, many of my clients make millions a year (each) from closely-held entities that they are just partners in (in which they do absolutely nothing).

What do you do for passive income? Any plans for it in the future?